Berkeley, CA - Doctors who circumcise infants, even with parental assent,
are potentially liable for criminal assault. That's the conclusion of an
article just published in a legal journal by an international team of
lawyers.

No medical indications justify neonatal circumcision, according to the
article, and therefore it must now be considered an assault causing grievous
bodily harm and a form of genital mutilation.

The article, "Circumcision of Healthy Boys - Criminal Assault?" is written
by an Australian psychology professor, Gregory Boyle; a Harvard-educated
American attorney and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the
Child (ARC), J. Steven Svoboda; an Oxford-educated British attorney,
Christopher P. Price, and an Australian attorney and Executive Director of
Children Australia, Inc., Professor J. Neville Turner. It appears in the
February 2000 issue of the Journal of Law and Medicine.

Although fewer than one in five Australian baby boys is circumcised today,
the article has created interest and controversy there by challenging the
medical profession to cease the practice. Since more than three out of five
babies are circumcised in the US - and nearly all in some areas - the
controversy is likely to be even greater here.

ARC Executive Director J. Steven Svoboda congratulated the Journal of Law
and Medicine for publishing the article and for daring to question received
wisdom about the procedure. He pointed out that the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) conceded in its policy statement in March 1999 the absence
of any medical reason sufficient to support "routine" infant circumcision.

"Since the AAP confirmed that circumcision is not a medical issue, it is
clear that compelling legal and human rights concerns now demand that it be
eradicated," Svoboda said. "This article helps set forth some of the reasons
why circumcision must stop."

The articles says the rights to bodily integrity, to liberty and security of
the person, and to freedom from discrimination because of sex, religion or
race are guaranteed by a number of internationally recognized human rights
documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

"Infant circumcision seriously breaches the child's rights and is utterly
incompatible with the doctor's legal and ethical duties toward the child
patient," Svoboda said "A parent's consent cannot justify removal of healthy
tissue - whether it be a finger, a breast, a clitoris, or a foreskin -
without a valid medical reason."

A $10 million lawsuit by an Ohio boy who lost the tip of his penis in a
circumcision was settled last year. Cases are underway where parental
consent was considered inadequately informed, but the article opens the way
for legal challenges to "successful" circumcisions even where "informed
consent" was given by parents.